The Atlantic: Hacking the President’s DNA & Open Source

Really well written & thought provoking article in the Atlantic with a conclusion that Open Source is our best defense:

The U.S. government is surreptitiously collecting the DNA of world leaders, and is reportedly protecting that of Barack Obama. Decoded, these genetic blueprints could provide compromising information. In the not-too-distant future, they may provide something more as well—the basis for the creation of personalized bioweapons that could take down a president and leave no trace…..

In the hope of mounting the best defense against an attack, one possible solution—not without its drawbacks—is radical transparency: release the president’s DNA and other relevant biological data, either to a select group of security-cleared bioscience researchers or (the far more controversial step) to the public at large. These ideas may seem counterintuitive, but we have come to believe that open-sourcing this problem—and actively engaging the American public in the challenge of protecting its leader—might turn out to be the best defense.

One practical reason is cost. Any in-house protection effort would be exceptionally pricey. Certainly, considering what’s at stake, the country would bear the expense, but is that the best solution? After all, over the past five years, DIY Drones, a nonprofit online community of autonomous aircraft hobbyists (working for free, in their spare time), produced a $300 unmanned aerial vehicle with 90 percent of the functionality of the military’s $35,000 Raven. This kind of price reduction is typical of open-sourced projects.